Sacajawea (66 page)

The only light in camp was from the roasting fire. The whole expedition was worn out. They rolled up in their blankets with their feet toward the fire. There was no singing or dancing this night. Reuben Fields, known for his teasing, was lying next to Charbonneau. “You’re a regular dog-eater, ain’t you? I bet if I shook out your blankets I’d find a big piece of dried dog meat.”

“Oui,
I do like it,” admitted Charbonneau, turning over, “but don’t talk so loud. There are them that don’t favor it.”

Fields looked sideways. “Like your little woman?” he whispered. “And Captain Clark?”

“Shut your damn mouth,” Charbonneau told him quietly. Charbonneau’s wide, thick-lipped mouth was tight at the corners. He spoke in a husky voice. “Don’t tease me about my likes and dislikes and the behavior of my
femme. Tu comprends?”
He reached a hand out and punched Fields in the belly.

Fields looked bewildered. “Sure, I’ll forget it. I was only teasing a bit for fun. What else is there to do for a laugh? Aw, come on, Frenchy, I didn’t mean nothing.”

“I got a different notion,” Charbonneau said.

“But why?” asked Fields, sitting up and beginning to chatter. “What have I done? I haven’t done anything. I was just funning, friendly-like. No offense.” Then he got hold of himself and said more slowly, “Aren’t you going to forget it?”

“Non,
I don’t forget.”

“Not just some fun?” Fields asked foolishly. He put a hand behind himself for a brace and ran his tongue back and forth along his lips a couple of times, as if his throat and mouth were all dried out. He looked around, and it was not encouraging to him. There was a solid ring of faces, and they were not serious, but smiling, waiting expectantly for someone to punch someone else in the nose.

Fields said, “You don’t want a fight, now, do you?”

Nobody replied. Then Captain Clark came out of the tall grasses, being carried by two Nez Percés. “I understand what Lewis feels—this is so ridiculous,” he said, waving the two men off toward their own village. “I don’t like being lifted here and there and watched over as I take a leak. Whatever brought us to this village was a mistake.”

“No mistake,” whined Charbonneau. “This here man makes smart remarks to me. No man is going to call me yellow, if that’s what it means by calling me a dog-eater. And no man is going to imply that my
femme
and you are in cahoots.”

Captain Clark sighed, not knowing what the men were arguing about, but knowing that Reuben Fields was just a harmless tease. “Of course not,” he said smoothly. “You know we have a number of men here only too willing to eat dog instead of that gritty, greasy salmon—Captain Lewis for one. And as for Janey and me, we only agree that dog meat does not suit our taste. You know Fields—he teases constantly; it even becomes tiresome. So—no more fuss. Go to sleep. You’ll feel all right in the morning.”

Charbonneau pulled his dirty blue capote over himself. “Well, I am not one to make a mountain from a molehill, but I still say I don’t like to be made fun of.”

A few of the men looked hard at Charbonneau, but most pretended that they had not heard him and rolled over to sleep. Captain Clark said quietly, “Tomorrow after supper I’ll keep time by beating on a pot with a dog bone while you dance with York for some other group of natives down this river. They’ll think you’re a big man.”

Sacajawea could not sleep. She was curled up off to one side with Pomp, and she watched the bluff above the camp, but it was all blackness now. All the time Charbonneau was fussing with Fields she wondered how she could get to Captain Lewis without being noticed. Now she wrapped the blankets around Pomp and inched her way to Lewis, who was slumped against a low rock, snoring.

“I have to talk,” she said, pulling on his sleeve.

“It’s the middle of the night!” he said in surprise.

“I had to wake you. Something is going on with Old Toby and Cutworm. I thought you would like to know right away. You told me, ‘Anything you hear or see that affects the expedition.’”

“Janey, what’s going on?”

“This afternoon, when it was yet daylight, when we were at the village, they built a signal fire on the stony brow of the bluff.”

“Why the signal?” Lewis asked uneasily, wondering fleetingly if there were hostile bands watching. What would it be like to be struck with terror instead of delight over the fact that unknown human beings were moving about in this country? He put the thought away and waited for an answer, balancing on an elbow.

“Old Toby signals the tribe we left a day ago. He advises them that he is returning.”

This made Lewis sit up. “They are not staying with us to the Pacific Ocean?” He shifted irritably. “Why?”

“Mostly,” Sacajawea said, looking directly at Lewis, “because they see no reason for making the rest of the trip. They do not like river travel, or the food. They see you have no need for more interpreters, with Drouillard talking to the river people now and the two Nez Percé guides.”

“Oh, they’re just a little jealous. I think they’ll get over that. I have to be sympathetic,” said Lewis.

“But you do not agree?” Sacajawea asked quietly. “The Shoshonis never do anything that seems useless or without any pleasure attached to it.”

“Can’t you persuade them to stay? They have been of great service to us. I will repay them well.”

“I don’t think I can do anything, but I’ll try because you are a friend and I am on this journey with you.”

“Janey, this journey is precariously balanced between acute misery and bearable hardship. I should not ask you for help, but I am pleased that you feel you owe it to me. I am grateful for the information, and we’ll settle this in the morning.”

Sacajawea sat hunched over for a few moments thinking she ought to leave. Then she said, “When I think of the times to come, the frightening river travel, the constant stink of fish, and the freezing nights, I could go crazy. But I don’t think of just that, and the time goes smoothly enough. There is pleasure for me being here with you white men. One day follows the last without much trouble. I see land that Shoshonis have never seen and meet tribes not known to them. It is a satisfaction more than a pleasure. When I wander away and come back into camp, it is inviting, and I find companionship here, strange and indescribable, but satisfying—something I could never have dreamed when I was a child or when I was with the Mandans.”

Lewis propped himself on an elbow as Scannon came crawling toward him, fawning with ears laid back and mouth wrinkled over white fangs.

“Even this dog gives me pleasure.”

“Of course,” Lewis said. “He is a loyal friend to all of us.” Lewis lay back.

“It is time for sleeping,” said Sacajawea, and she crawled back to her blankets.

Lewis could not go back to sleep. This was rare for him because normally he could defer a pressing problem until the next day, knowing that a night’s sleep would help him solve it to the best of his ability the next morning.

But tonight there was the perplexing question of the two Shoshoni guides. How to repay these men?

He became introspective. Curious how they had come and helped the expedition through the pass, knowing how to fashion the snowshoes at the right time, to use the sheep’s wool and add fat to the diet, even how to cut and sew clothing. Then the two Nez Percés came as the Shoshonis were leaving. It was fate. Stranger still was the presence of Janey. He could not have imagined her while they made preparations and wintered at Wood River almost two years before. Life hides many things until the time is right, he thought.

Before Captain Lewis was awake to settle the situation next morning, Old Toby and Cutworm had had enough of useless canoe-riding. Without a word to anyone, they packed their few belongings and left on foot.

Sacajawea thought she had seen them for a brief instant at a distance, running up the river’s edge, shortly before the morning meal.

“They didn’t say a word of farewell,” said Captain Lewis.

“C’est extraordinaire,”
Charbonneau said.

“Maybe it was the dogs I bought for breakfast,” suggested Drouillard. “They eyed them while I skinned them out and sputtered some Shoshoni vituperations before sunup.”

Twisted Hair made hand signs and with his jargon to Drouillard said he knew they had made up their minds to leave when they had seen the drifting sagebrush the day before. Then, after riding through the rain and rough water, flopping around like soggy brown bears, they knew the river spirits were angry. So—they weren’t going to leave land again, not even to fish from a canoe.

“They didn’t even wait for their pay,” said Captain Clark. Then he asked Twisted Hair if a Nez Percé could ride a fast horse out to bring them back so that they could receive their pay, at least. The chief nodded his head from side to side.

“No, no, if the white men gave the Shoshoni guides goods for payment, the Nez Percés would only rob them on their way home. If they think they need payment, they will take something from the cache you white men left by the five big pine stumps, or they might take a couple of your horses along with their mule back over the mountains with them.”

There was regret in everyone’s voice, and disappointment. Old Toby and Cutworm had been useful guides and good friends.

The expedition began packing their gear in order to leave before the village became wide-awake. But Goodrich, on guard, alerted the captains that there seemed to be a babel of voices coming toward camp. Clark looked up, and his first startled impression was that the whole tribe had moved into their camp, but when he counted there were only twenty-four. These men were dressed in skins and had decorations of shells tied in their hair and at their ankles and wrists. Each had a thin bone pierced through his nose. Chief Live Well made signs that they wanted the expedition to come to their camp for some kind of ceremony.

“Tell them we’ll come if they don’t carry us,” said Lewis, who was still feeling a bit weak.

Drouillard and Twisted Hair spoke with the men. Drouillard told Captain Clark they wanted everyone in the camp to go with them. Clark thought if they spent the morning keeping these Nez Percés happy, Lewis would be that much stronger when they were ready to go downriver in the canoes.

Sacajawea permitted herself to be shuffled along as the Nez Percé surrounded them and led them to the center of their village, where most of the villagers were already assembled and dressed in good skins, with their faces decorated with white, blue, and greenish paints.

As the pipe was being passed around, she tried to assimilate the feeling of sadness she experienced with the absence of Old Toby. It had been a kind of link with her relatives; now it was broken. She felt as though her heart lay on the ground.

Captain Clark gave the chief a handkerchief and a small hatchet. The four drummers sat at the four compass points and beat a one-two tattoo. A Medicine Man dressed in goat skins stepped into the circle and placed a tray made of woven grasses on the ground by the small fire. Beyond the ceremonial circle was a corner where many women were cooking over several larger fires. They were roasting meat over a scaffolding.

Suddenly Drouillard turned to the captains, his face white.

“I can’t believe this!” he cried. “They can’t be serious!”

“Tell us,” urged Captain Clark, quickly indicating that Twisted Hair and Tetoharsky could help Drouillard in the translations.

“They want us to become members of their village.”

“No problem with that,” said Clark. “If that makes them happy, let’s get on with it.”

“Look at the pile of pointy bones on the grass mat. They will put every last one of them through our noses so we will be true Pierced Noses.”

“Not through my baby’s nose,” said Sacajawea, pulling out of her sadness right away and tugging on Charbonneau’s sleeve. “And not through mine. I want to breathe.”

“They have counted us and have the exact number—one for each,” said Drouillard.

“Pierce our noses!” exclaimed Shannon. “No, by God, not mine!”

“I’ll not stand still for that treatment!” shouted Gass.

Charbonneau shook his head as if he had just tumbled to the situation. “And not me—
allons!”

“Wait!” shouted Captain Clark. “There must be a way out of this. Think, all of you. I’ll talk with the chief as long as I dare.”

Captain Lewis scratched his head and wondered if more trade beads would satisfy them. He had Drouillard ask. The chief’s face lit up; he would take the beads, then go on with the ceremony. The drummers beat faster.

“Fire the shooting-stick in the air,” suggested Sacajawea.

“Start a fire with the phosphorus matches,” suggested Cruzatte.

“I don’t want to start a war,” said Clark between his teeth.

Chief Live Well began lining up the people of the expedition. First York, because he was the only black white man with the group. Then Sacajawea, because she was the only squaw, and then her child. The chiefs of the group next, Lewis and Clark, and then the rest of the men. This was to be a big celebration. It would take a long time to pierce so many noses. But when such a fine adornment was to be added to the gift the wind had brought them, time was nothing. ”
Huru!”
Chief Live Well shouted, bending over the thirty-two bone pieces, honed needle-thin on either end.

York was lifted by two men with large bones in their noses and greenish stripes along their arms. The Medicine Man was carefully selecting the correct bone. Suddenly York jumped about in a jog. This delighted the villagers, and they rocked back and forth in a shuffle, grinning.

York was talking to Drouillard in a singsong voice. “I have an idea, and it might save us from this nose-piercing. I might have done it anyway, so it’s nothing to be excited about. Remember that pretty Nez Percé gal we saw yesterday who took the mats for her lodge? You tell that chief to get me something like that and I’ll give these people something they can keep to remember us by. By and by that gal will have a little baby.” He kept on dancing, moving his hips in front of the women and rolling his eyes at the men.

Drouillard’s mouth dropped. Captain Clark took over as he read Twisted Hair’s hand signs. “Sounds daft. But we don’t have many other ideas.”